Darlene Love: ‘I’ll never perform my Christmas classic on TV again’

Soul star Darlene Love has vowed never to perform her festive hit “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on TV again after singing the track for the 28th time on David Letterman’s final 2014 “The Late Show” last week.

Dec. 19 night’s show, which was rebroadcast on Christmas Day, was the outgoing late-night host’s final festive episode, and Love is planning to repay his two decades of support by refusing to perform the track he invites her to sing on TV every year for anyone else.

She tells Billboard magazine, “They never told me not to (perform it on another show), but it was an unspoken thing… After 10 years, then 15 years, of doing this one song on this one show, I felt I had an obligation to be true to them (Letterman and his TV producers).

“Before that, I wasn’t doing TV shows every year. Once I started doing that, others started adding me in their Christmas shows, but I wouldn’t sing Christmas.”

But Love insists she isn’t retiring the song for good and has a plan to rework it with Letterman’s longtime musical director and sidekick Paul Shaffer.

She adds, “I called Paul not too long ago and said, ‘Well, what are we gonna do now?’ I said, ‘I think we should get together once a year and do a huge Christmas show. A Paul Shaffer-Darlene Love Christmas show somewhere in New York.’ I’m sure it would sell out.”